2009 in Preview Pt. 2 - more bookmarks for the New Year.

January 5, 1:05 PMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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Five days in, how's your 2009 doing? 

That's the thing though isn't it, you just don't know until it's almost too late. I'm still taking in the deaths of Odetta, Bettie Page and Earth Kitt and that people are actually going to see Tom Cruise's Valkyrie - I mean, we all know how it ends, right? -  And already the world has turned and life is moving on.

It's amazing to think Barack Obama will finally become President on January 20th. Since the election it’s been like watching Ryan Seacrest on a Dick Clark New Year's Special. You know what I mean, it feels like he's the star and it’s his show, but this other guy, who we thought was gone, keeps showing up. And has any President about to leave office given as many interviews as George W. Bush has? The Decider has decided that perhaps a little legacy building and what history actually thinks of him might be something he wants to get on before the scant remaining members of the public who care about him, around an abysmally low 27%, care even a bit less - to think up until the mid-Thirties, a new President wasn't sworn in until March. 

Alas.

So, what will 2009 bring? There’s the Notorious B.I.G. movie coming out on January 16 laying down the life of the greatest rapper of his time. In theory, there’s a new album by Eminem, the greatest rapper of our time and perhaps ever coming out this year as well. However, I wouldn't bet too heavily on that just yet as Marshall Mathers can be as unpredictable as he is talented. What we do know is there's going to be a number of blasts from the past, after all Fleetwood Mac are touring, and the solidification of some big gains made in 2008. 

You can check out Part 1 of 2009 in Pop Culture Preview here

Also, if you're still so inclined, check out the Best and the Worst of 2008 by clicking here

So, without further adieu, the stadium goes dark, the intro music starts up and the lighters and cell phones, or the light app on your cell if you have an iPhone, are shining all over. You wanted the best? Well, like KISS used to say, you got 'em.

Ladies and gentlemen, Part 2 of the 2009 in Pop Culture preview.

6. Joss & Dolls - A few years ago I bumped into Eliza Dushku at an airport cabstand.  The charming actress was brimming with excitement at having just done her first David Letterman appearance and told me all about it as we waited for our respective rides.  Since then, Dushku has long past the point where yakking with Dave would seem like such a big deal. At the same time, despite a slew of roles from Bring It On to the recently released Nobel Son, Dushku surprisingly has never quite hit the star status many expected ever since she showed up playing the evil and compelling Faith on season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

That’s about to change. 

Teaming up again with Buffy creator Joss Whedon, Dushku returns to network TV on February 13 with Dollhouse. The series, which Dushku also produces, is about a team known as the “Dolls” or the “Actives” who hire themselves out for good deeds, bad deeds, fantasies and other tasks. Sounds like pretty standard TV fare, right? Yep, but like everything Whedon, whose last series Firefly just didn’t take off with viewers, does, there is a great twist that makes all the difference. In this show, the team has their memories completely erased after every job. With every new job they are imprinted with new personalities and information, both psychological and physical. The possibilities for the new Fox series, which doesn’t hide its debt to The Matrix, with a teaspoon of Logan’s Run stirred in, are limitless and made all the more intriguing with Dushku’s character of Echo beginning to gain some semblance of permanent consciousness.  

Book your playtime for the Dollhouse now.

Click here to check out Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku talking about Dollhouse, which they call “simply the most fascinating piece of television in the history of radio.” 

7. Take Me to the Mountain – With a name like Heartless Bastards you expect the band to play novelty tunes in a loud and aggressive style. The latter is certainly true, but the former is not.  Even if the Ohio band’s one-liner name might make you laugh for a second, the release of their third record Mountain on February 3 will stop you dead in your tracks. 

Epic is the best way to capture what frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom spent six months cooking up in an Austin apartment. Then, with a new band, she went into the studio – the result, full of steel pedal guitars, strings and Wennerstrom’s beautifully ragged vocals, could be the album of the year … and the year has just begun.

Check out a the band playing the title track from their upcoming Mountain album live at Austin’s Continental Club here.

8. Curation – It’s one of the annoyances of modern life - what if you just don't have the time, the inclination or the patience to sludge through all the crap on the web in the often dashed hope that you'll find what you are looking for? Google helps. Ask.com sometimes helps. Cuil and Yahoo! Search has their moments. Those totally subjective lists that everyone from Daily Candy to Pitchfork to those Top 5 of the week that annoying Pop Culture wise guy at Examiner.com does aren't bad either, but what are they enough and do they give us a clearer sense of what we want to know as we want and need to know it? Usually not. That could very well change in 2009, as curation becomes the online goal. If the idea that people truly desire personalization online can hit some solid and significant numbers, the sites that can offer streamlined but still scintillating concierge service with be the one that have the most gravitation pull - the question is to do that well, how many people are you as a site willing to not please all the time? 

9. That Other Cable News Network - With CNN having descended into gibberish - Yes, I'm talking to you Rick Sanchez - and FoxNews having backed the wrong candidate in the election, things are looking a bit stained in the 24/7 spin cycle. Thank God that there's MSNBC. The really little network, so little that Tucker Carlson got a show there when CNN bounced the bowtie buffoon, found its megaphone during the Presidential election and suddenly we talking that's entertainment. The Four Tear Your Hair Out Tenors of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthew, Dan Abrams, who has since left for the lucrative pastures of the consulting life, and Joe Scarborough ranted day after day, hour after hour about the failures and shortcomings of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin and every registered Republican they could find, FoxNews and especially Bill O'Reilly. And it worked. The ratings were up for the once unwatched station by 82% in 2008. Now that big number is in relation to the pretty impressive numbers FoxNews and CNN got also, but they don’t have the new sizzle of MSNBC. And they certainly don't have Rachel Maddow. Since guest hosting Olbermann’s show in April 208, Maddow, who has no interest in playing the “turn the other cheek Liberal” has come out with figurative guns blazing. In September 2008, MSNBC gave Maddows her own show and the fun really begun. Hell, Maddow has even started matching Larry King in the ratings. 

They have Barack Obama in the White House and the Democrats in power in Congress, MSNBC has the talent pool, the topics and the gift of timing to make 2009 their year ... if they don't gloat and if they don't wimp out, which with "progressives" you never can be too sure.

10. All the News that's Better to Print - I know, I know, this is supposed to be the year when the guillotine comes down on newspapers. The end seems near – advertising’s been falling for a few years now, readership declining, very few of us under the age of 64 willing to wait to tomorrow morning to learn what happened today and now the greater economy going down faster than the Hindenburg, the scavengers are circling. Dozens of small and local papers in towns and cities all over the continent are barely holding on, the New York Times is losing reader as fast as it is stock value and Tribune, which owns, among others, the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune and is the second-largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., entered Chapter 11 on December 8. 

Not exactly banner headlines. 

Yet, as the expression goes, "it is always darkest before the dawn." 

For smart traditional media, 2009 could be a brand new day if they pay close attention to what the Dark Lord is doing. That's right, once again the beast from down under came, he conquered, and, as he has so many times before, the Dark Lord made a quality publication, and one of the few papers to not be hemorrhaging readers, wider in scope, clearer in design, bigger and better. The Dark Lord's name is Rupert Murdoch, the paper is the Wall Street Journal and, one year after taking over the venerable publication, in his quest to TKO the NY Times and make the WSJ the national paper of record, the media mogul might be showing the industry how to save itself.

 How is he doing it? By doing what few papers are doing.  Investing in good staff and good tech. Redesigning with a purpose and not just as a make-work project. Expanding core strengths, which the greater coverage of non-financial matters has, in a time of economic crisis, actually reinforces the paper's always top notch business coverage as the interconnections between the political, the cultural and the economic are made all the more evident and relevant. Because in new media, old media, traditional media, jump up and down journalism, whatever you want to call it, the goal, both online and in print, is very simple - have the information that people want and the information that they might not want but soon find they need. Have it fast and soon afterwards have it in every expanding context. Got that and you've got it all. Pay attention - the Dark Lord knows a thing or two.

And don’t forget the movies …

11. Born to be Wild - I know a lot of people are salivating over the new Terminator sequel starring Christian Bale and a lot of people are anticipating Public Enemies, directed by Michael Mann and starring Johnny Depp as the bank robbing John Dillinger and Christian "Him Again?" Bale as the G-Man chasing him. Hot to trot movies, I grant you. Hot to trot, but not where the action is. F

For me, Spike Jonz’s $80 million three years in the making live action interpretation of the classic children's tale Where The Wild Things Are, with Catherine Keener and James Gandolfini among others, is the one to watch for. It's out October 16.  Not far behind, in the hotly anticipated category, the maestro looks to have found his groove again with Inglourious Basterds. The Quentin Tarantino directed remake of the 1970s action flick comes out on August 21 and stars Brad Pitt and a cast of misfits as they take on Nazi Germany. What part of perfect do you not get there? 

There you go, that’s your 2009 Cliff Notes, mark up that calendar and get ready, it’s going to be quite the electric rodeo ride